


Dreams of Winter

by Saraste



Series: February Ficlet Challenge 2018 [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Dreams, February Ficlet Challenge 2018, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 03:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13696353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Steve thought Bucky was lost.





	Dreams of Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for February Ficlet Challenge 2018 Day 15. character B has been gone for a year.
> 
> I may have been creative with the MCU timeline???

In Steve’s view, it hasn’t been more than a year. A year of Bucky being gone. Being dead. Because Steve failed him. The nightmares are constant, in frequency and content: Bucky falls and Steve can do nothing stop it. The wishing dreams are worse, at least when he wakes up and remembers, because in them  _ Bucky didn’t fall _ . Some dreams are about Steve jumping after him, killing Nazis and staying with Bucky as he bleeds to death, putting a bullet in his own head, after. Those are… somewhere in the middle.

In any case, Steve wakes up in a new century, confused and grieving, and has to try and put his life together, be a force for good, even when half of him is missing, gone forever.

Then he meets the Winter Soldier.

...and of course it’s Bucky under that mask.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” hurts more than the punches and kicks, which Steve feels like he deserves, for having let Bucky down for so long.

The dreams are more accusing, after that, when Steve does manage to sleep. After the helicarriers and near drowning in the Potomac he doesn’t do so swell.

It doesn’t take a year for Bucky to come wandering back, darkness under his eyes, shabby and broken, telling Steve he knows him.

They put one another back together in a new way, taking their time, and it’s good.


End file.
